MODERN SLANG PHRASES

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 12

MODERN SLANG PHRASES

When that famous American George; Ade, author of the inimitable "Fables in Slang," was iv England an enterprising journalist brought to .him a volume of Macaulay's "Essays," selected a slab, from'the essay on. Dr. Johnson, and. asked Ade to put it into a form intelligible to the man in the Chicago street, says a writer in tihe "Manchester Guardian." Ade read over this, passage: "Johnson's friends have allow-; ed that he carried to a ridiculous extreme this unjust contempt for foreign- 1 ers. He pronounced the French to be| a very silly people, much behind 'iis,| stupid, ignorant creatures. And this] judgment he formed after having been 1 at Paris about a month, during which! lie would not talk French for fear of giving the natives an advantage over] him on conversation." Transferred, by Ade into 1 "the language of the future," the extract became: "Johnson's 1 side-partners have given it out cold that! ho overplayed his hand when it came'j to harpooning the foreigner. He sized:: up the French as a bunch of mutts and. lightweights, not in the same class \vith; us—low foreheads, bone heads, and very' little doing under the cocoa.- He thoughthe was wise to the proposition after ho had been up against the parlez-voo-for ono brief moon. Ke kept" the soft I pedal on most of the time because he;' knew his talk was phoney, and if he tried to go along with . the native sons he would be shown up and made to look like thirty ce>'4s-" 1